


The Boy with the Broken Heart

by AndreaLyn



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 09:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1643981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>If this isn’t a fairytale (and it’s not, it never has been) then Liebgott’s sure as fuck not guaranteed a princess, but he’s managed to meet a prince pain-in-the-ass in the process.</i> Liebgott's not so sure about getting a Happily Ever After.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy with the Broken Heart

Stories are supposed to start with once upon a time, but this one can’t do that. This one isn’t sure whether it’s going to get a happily ever after and it’s far from a fairytale. Joe Liebgott, who grew up thinking there were still heroes in the world doesn’t get a once upon a time because he doesn’t really remember ever coming into being. His childhood is rife with wildfire memories that scatter the scope of his past, but they always come to him out of order.   
  
He wonders, now, with the war not-quite-over and far-from-begun if that’s how he’ll recall these long and arduous days. Liebgott wants to know if lush verdant green hills will come before or after dusty shook-up basements or if the icy frosts of hell will manage to ever rub away the burn of Currahee told by the blisters and boils on his feet.  
  
If this isn’t a fairytale (and it’s not, it never has been) then Liebgott’s sure as fuck not guaranteed a princess, but he’s managed to meet a prince pain-in-the-ass in the process.  
  
He’ll tell you this. Joe Liebgott will never forget  _blue_  -- how the sky burned with it as months and years passed them and he went from a kid from the Bay to being a soldier (but not a hero, never a hero, heroes don’t pull triggers when the war is almost done, heroes don’t get to the dungeons so late that they can’t save everyone, where they can’t stop them,  _stop them_  from blotting out his people).   
  
Blue like bursts of mortar at midnight in Bastogne, sparks coloring the sky as if it could somehow be beautiful. Blue like the frostbitten toes and fingers that every man on the line wore like badges of honor – forget a fucking Purple Heart, blue toes was something to hold with pride.  
  
And more than that, he won’t ever forget the blue of David Webster’s eyes – judging him, appraising him, how they burned brighter against bloodshed and wrecked history. Liebgott’s not sure he’ll ever forget the way they shone that much brighter when Liebgott grabbed Webster and hauled him to the most private place they could find, kissing him like the war’s as good a backdrop as any to steal this respite.  
  
Now, a mountaintop looming behind him and not enough points tucked away in his pocket, there’s a blue sky above him, blue lake before him, and blue eyes staring at him like they just don’t understand.  
  
“How could you?”  
  
“I did what I had to do,” is Joe’s quiet reply. He’s armed with his convictions and a rifle that he learned to use years ago (moments ago, seconds ago,  _forever_  ago). “You saw what he did. Everyone saw.”  
  
“There are tribunals for this,” Webster heatedly protests, his words a desperate hiss.   
  
Kisses and warm touches on cold nights in Germany only earn so much and benediction is not listed among the benefits. “Fuck the tribunals,” Liebgott says sharply. “Where were they to stop it from happening … to stop …”  
  
He doesn’t mean to falter.   
  
Liebgott’s words break apart when they’re swallowed by a heavy lump in his throat that’s been buried there for so long that he’s not sure what it began as – Tipper, Bastogne, hell, even Pearl fucking Harbor. He swallows hard and hopes to God that Web will let it go; he has to let it go.   
  
It’s David Kenyon Webster, so of course he doesn’t.  
  
Instead, he slides his palm up Liebgott’s starched collar and hooks his fingers against the fabric. Warm fingertips brush against Liebgott’s neck (and the ever-sensitive scarred area that will always be a part of him). Web moves his fingers a little higher until they’re buried in the woods of his hair and he uses his other hand to grab hold of Liebgott’s belt, maneuvering them until they’re pressed to wooden walls of one more cabin dotting the landscape.  
  
“Web, I can’t,” Liebgott murmurs, pained.   
  
“You don’t have to.”  
  
“You still think I shouldn’t have done it.”  
  
“You’re right.”  
  
It burns him, makes Liebgott see white hot rage and he needs to make Webster  _understand_  that this isn’t a fairytale and there is no prince and no happily ever after. Too late, he realizes that he’s said it aloud, rasping out, “…and that means there’s no high and mighty moral to the story. There’s just more blood.”  
  
“Why does there need to be a happily?”  
  
“What?”  
  
Webster’s staring at him and he looks so confused that Liebgott wants to do something – smooth the wrinkles of his forehead away or kiss him until the conversation fades into a whispered nothingness.  
  
“Let it be simple, Joe. Let there be an ‘ever after’ and leave it at that,” Webster says, all that Harvard learning shining through with that earnest tone and always with those hopeful blue eyes that haven’t managed to dull, not even after all the horrors of the war. “And you’ll be the cautionary tale of the boy with the broken heart.”  
  
“I can’t fix it,” Liebgott croaks out. “I don’t even know where to start.”  
  
“How about with ‘once upon a time’?”  
  
And so, once upon a time, Joe Liebgott finds himself in the middle of an ending war with a broken heart, Harvard glue, and so much blue around him that he could drown in it.


End file.
